Simon Cooper is a senior lecturer in further education. After leaving university, he worked as a freelance writer, publishing in titles including the Big Issue. He has acted as secretary of a housing co-operative in the North East of England and worked on community access to higher education courses.

1. 'Yes, but is it Art?' The Revolutionary Transformations of Michael Gold.- 2. The Longing for a Line: Modernism Meets the New Deal.- 3. 'A Moment of Ecstasy, a Lifetime of Regret': the Popular Limits of the Proletarian.- 4. The Bastard as Art Object Bastardized: Erskine Caldwell's Fine Art of Standing Still.- 5. Gladiators in the Century of Progress: the World's Fairs, Pulp Modernism and the Popular Contests of the 1930s.- 6. Affirming the Modernist Principle: Invisible Man, Blues Signifiers and the Return of the Bottom Dogs.